Robert Leighton Cooke was a consultant surgeon at the Manitoba Clinic, Winnipeg, Canada. He was born on 19 September 1914 in Wolseley, Saskatchewan, the fourth child of Robert Cooke, a general practitioner, and Ellen Cooke née Sunter, a teacher. He remembered making house calls with his father during the winter on a horse-drawn sleigh. His family was affected by the poverty of the Great Depression of the 1930s, but did manage to send him to the University of Saskatchewan, where he gained a BSc in 1936, and then on to the University of Manitoba for his MD. He qualified in 1939 with a gold medal. In 1941 he joined the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve and served with the Royal Navy in England and on board HMHS *Oxfordshire* in Sierra Leone and South Africa. He was demobilised in 1945 as a surgeon lieutenant commander and carried out postgraduate surgical training in London. He gained his FRCS in 1947 and his FRCSC in 1948. He returned to Winnipeg and then in 1951 went to New York for his surgical oncology training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital. In 1954 he returned to Winnipeg and a year later joined the Manitoba Clinic, and practised there until 1980. He was an associate professor of surgery at the University of Manitoba and served terms as postgraduate surgery training director, an examiner in surgery for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and as president of the Winnipeg Medical Society. After retiring from his surgical career, he joined Manitoba Health, first as an assessor and then as chief medical consultant. He served on the boards and committees of Manitoba Medical Services, the Manitoba Medical Association, CancerCare Manitoba and the Canadian Cancer Society. Outside medicine, he enjoyed skiing and sailing. His family had a cabin at West Hawk Lake and there he could relax, pottering, mending gear and sailing. He had a robust sense of humour and loved to socialise. In retirement he relished the meetings of his current affairs discussion group. He also travelled extensively with his wife. In 1949 he married Ruth Elizabeth Grahame. They had four children, Mary Ellen, Robert, Andrew and Sheila, and 11 grandchildren. Predeceased by his wife, a retired physician and professor, Robert Leighton Cooke died on 8 February 2013 aged 98.